Monday, January 30, 2012

Managing the Science Fair Digitally

It's Science Fair time again. This is how our students and teachers are creating, organizing and collecting their science fair projects. The students collect templates that are given to them digitally and use them to complete their own projects. Then digitize their work and hand it back to the teacher digitally as well. Building their portfolio as they complete their work.







For an outline of all the videos in the context of a larger educational framework, please visit:

Using Google Books to Keep Track of a Book List.

One standard that my district has worked on for some time is called 25 Books or Quantity, Quality, Range and Depth.  The standard is meant to expose students to a variety of genres, styles and authors and most of all get them reading!  Throughout the year, they keep a running list of the books they have read and how they showed the teachers they have read them. (Depending on the grade level, teachers keep track of this list.)  The aspect of this that has always concerned me is that at the end of the year, all that work simply gets tossed out and any information that the students have accumulated goes with it.

This video covers how our students use Google Books to keep track of their book list and share that with their teacher.  While the teacher is getting the record they need, the students are building a search-able database of almost every book they've read from the 5th grade on.  This is a resource that they can take with them and I know I would love to have a search-able database of all the books I've read since 5th grade.




For an outline of all the videos in the context of a larger educational framework, please visit: